Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 06/12/2018 23:45, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>> You won't get anything close to double the speed. The extra cores will
>>> mostly go unused, unless you use applications that make use of them.
>>>
>>> You will still get a speed up due to the newer CPU architecture and
>>> the higher frequency.
>>
>> What I was thinking about is something like when compiling and all the
>> cores are used.  In other words, CPU is at max load.  Right now, I have
>> only 4 cores.  New CPU doubles that and each core is faster as well.  As
>> a example, Firefox takes about a hour to compile.  I was hopeful that
>> would drop to 30 or 35 minutes or so.
>
> Oh that. Yeah, there will be a 2x speedup when emerging packages
> (MAKEOPTS="-j8"). I was referring to application performance when
> using the machine. I don't consider package installation as "using the
> machine" :-)
>
>

Well, one thing I been doing that uses a LOT of memory and CPU, scanning
images and editing them in Gimp.  The biggest problem was Dolphin and
its memory leak, which at the time I didn't realize was abnormal.  At
one point, just opening the directory with a lot of large images made
Dolphin go crazy with memory usage.  I've since realized that Dolphin
has a bug.  Still, having 32GBs of ram is better since I can now compile
Firefox and others in tmpfs instead of on the hard drive.  That said,
Gimp uses quite a bit CPU power at times too.  I also sometimes convert
videos which can get CPU and/or memory hungry. 


>>> The two speeds specify the lower and upper speeds, depending on how
>>> many CPU cores are currently being under load, and also how much load
>>> there is. You don't have to worry about it though. It's all automatic.
>>> [...]
>>
>> That's good to know.  That I was wondering about and couldn't find a
>> clear answer on.  I didn't know if I needed to install something to
>> manage that or what.
>
> The kernel takes care of that. You should be able to observe the CPU's
> frequency and temperature in KSysGuard. Here's how it looks here:
>
>   https://i.imgur.com/Xogy3h0.png
>
> In that screenshot, the CPU has all 4 cores clocked down to 1.6GHz
> because they're all mostly idle. Once there's high CPU load, it will
> crank up the clocks towards 4GHz.
>
> You need to add these sensors manually to KSysGuard though. But if you
> do, it's a good way to verify things are working as intended.
>
>
>


I use the sensors built into the kernel.  Last time I tried lm-sensors,
I couldn't get it to work right.  I enabled and recompiled the kernel
with the needed drivers and I haven't had any trouble since.  That was
on a previous rig too.  I guess I can cat /proc/cpuinfo to see if it is
working as well.  As long as I can see it is working as it should, I'm
not going to worry about checking it much.  I use gkrellm to monitor my
stuff.  I do check Ksysguard at times tho. 

Right now, I'm waiting on a new fan for my CPU.  I noticed when I turned
the rig back on last time, it was slow to get going.  I had to give it a
little push with my finger.  Since it has a lot of hours on it, I oiled
it a bit to help it along temporarily and ordered a new fan.  I plan to
clean the CPU cooler real good, replace the fan and upgrade the CPU all
at one time.  Then the video card and hard drive stuff after that. 

What I'm doing, upgrading to almost a new system.  I have a Gigabyte 970
mobo.  With the new CPU, video card, memory and such, I should get
several more years unless something burns out.  Looking at newer stuff,
I'm not sure it is worth building a whole new rig at this point. 
Computers seem to have sort of peeked unless you spend lots of money.  I
just wonder what will come next that gives a whole new generation of
computing.  It seems clock speed has pretty much reached its limit or
something. 

Dale

:-)  :-)